The cursor blinked back from my computer screen with the visceral impact of a thunderbolt. The time had come to pass: My favorite gadfly and topic of ridicule is finally tending his two longhorn steers down in Texas. The cursor, like Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven, bobbed above my imagination’s door croaking, “Nevermore.”
Hogwash, I told the Raven. History is out there to get written, and by god I’ll do my share of writing it. But the thing about history is that it needs to cure a bit, percolate around in the consciousness, get digested into a coherent cause of future effects. Naturally, I lack time and energy to wait that long and crave immediate gratification. I’m spoiled; the last eight years were easy pickin’s.
The Raven ogled me with his shiny black eyes, reproachful and taunting. He is no muse, but maybe he’s open to a little dialogue.
“You got lazy,” observed the Raven. “Now that you actually have to think, you’re experiencing a failure of imagination. Maybe you should go back to your roots,” he grumbled. Thanks, Raven.
My treehugger taproot runs deep and my rhizomes spread wide. Being a treehugger is a calling that requires participation on a personal level, and action on a collective level. A sincere treehugger must do all the day-to-day things which a person can do to “make a difference,” while at the same time recognizing big-picture issues and taking action to make them better.
When I started out in the treehugger business, I quickly realized that big-picture issues were often out of my reach. I couldn’t save the whales or keep gorillas from becoming bush meat; I couldn’t keep Russia from cutting down the Taiga forest or Japanese trawlers from scraping ocean fisheries clean of every living thing.
I decided instead that I would make my difference in the place I lived, Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Shortly after that, I realized events had outstripped my efforts, which no matter how well-meaning couldn’t hold their own in the face of big-picture stuff. It didn’t matter how hard I worked to save the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly, for example, while global warming continually vanished its habitat.
What to do? Throw up my hands and declare despair? No. The thing to do was take a closer look at the big picture. Whether or not I could actually do anything about it didn’t matter. The macrocosm was the only real game in town.
My macrocosmic consideration manifested two realities: First, if the planet’s climate collapses, nothing we do, except maybe preserving our ability to build fire, will make a hell of a lot of difference. Such catastrophic collapse could quickly change the way we humans do business here on planet Earth.
Second, of all our human business, warfare is particularly devastating to the natural environment. The natural world is collateral damage to nations at war; we think in terms of human not environmental costs when we wage war. Pictures of burning oil wells during the Gulf War demonstrated to me how war clouds landscapes and destroys populations, human and otherwise. If earth really matters, war is one of the worst things we can do to it.
Furthermore, it is futile to address big-picture stuff like war and climate in any arena other than political. Personal choices like turning off the water while brushing my teeth or choosing cloth over plastic at the market aren’t political. Lobbying a government to regulate carbon emissions or pursue diplomacy over warfare is political action at every level.
So I transited from pure and fundamental tree hugging—rodents in the backyard and herons in the willows—to political observation and commentary that ultimately changed the nature of my thought.
“Not only did you get lazy,” said the Raven, now perched on my monitor, “but you got wrapped up in politics and forgot about what matters, the stuff politics is really about.”
“At the end of the day,” I told him, “environmental stuff is purely political. There is plenty of bad stuff going on, but a lot of good stuff too.”
I’d like to think we have turned some kind of environmental corner. President Obama said, “We cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now…This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.”
Obama says he will make combating global warming a top priority, and that he will “reinvigorate” the Environmental Protection Agency. He says he will protect our children from toxins like lead, be a responsible steward of our natural treasures and reverse previous administration attempts to chip away at clean air and water standards.
In economic hard times, it is difficult to think about saving the planet. But there must be ways that saving the planet will also help our economies. “Ecology” and “economy” are related words. President Obama intends to establish millions of new “green jobs” creating renewable electricity sources, increasing energy efficiency and weatherizing homes.
Obama will invest $150 billion over ten years in advanced energy technologies. He intends to increase fuel economy standards, enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits and invest cap-and-trade pollution credits in the nation’s energy future. This is all good news for the environment.
I looked at the Raven. “So how’s that for getting back to my roots?” I asked.
“Well, it’s a start,” the bird ruffled his feathers and pecked at my mouse pad. “And you should be proud of yourself for not even once hammering the, uh…former administration.”
Ravens are thoughtful—even talkative, but I’d never encountered one quite so garrulous. I reminded myself that I had asked for this dialogue.
“But I have just one request,” continued the Raven, looking uncomfortable and shifting from foot to foot. “Will you please lay off the metaphors?” I looked at him and shooed him off my computer before he pooped on the keyboard.
“Only that and nothing more?”
Hogwash, I told the Raven. History is out there to get written, and by god I’ll do my share of writing it. But the thing about history is that it needs to cure a bit, percolate around in the consciousness, get digested into a coherent cause of future effects. Naturally, I lack time and energy to wait that long and crave immediate gratification. I’m spoiled; the last eight years were easy pickin’s.
The Raven ogled me with his shiny black eyes, reproachful and taunting. He is no muse, but maybe he’s open to a little dialogue.
“You got lazy,” observed the Raven. “Now that you actually have to think, you’re experiencing a failure of imagination. Maybe you should go back to your roots,” he grumbled. Thanks, Raven.
My treehugger taproot runs deep and my rhizomes spread wide. Being a treehugger is a calling that requires participation on a personal level, and action on a collective level. A sincere treehugger must do all the day-to-day things which a person can do to “make a difference,” while at the same time recognizing big-picture issues and taking action to make them better.
When I started out in the treehugger business, I quickly realized that big-picture issues were often out of my reach. I couldn’t save the whales or keep gorillas from becoming bush meat; I couldn’t keep Russia from cutting down the Taiga forest or Japanese trawlers from scraping ocean fisheries clean of every living thing.
I decided instead that I would make my difference in the place I lived, Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Shortly after that, I realized events had outstripped my efforts, which no matter how well-meaning couldn’t hold their own in the face of big-picture stuff. It didn’t matter how hard I worked to save the Uncompahgre fritillary butterfly, for example, while global warming continually vanished its habitat.
What to do? Throw up my hands and declare despair? No. The thing to do was take a closer look at the big picture. Whether or not I could actually do anything about it didn’t matter. The macrocosm was the only real game in town.
My macrocosmic consideration manifested two realities: First, if the planet’s climate collapses, nothing we do, except maybe preserving our ability to build fire, will make a hell of a lot of difference. Such catastrophic collapse could quickly change the way we humans do business here on planet Earth.
Second, of all our human business, warfare is particularly devastating to the natural environment. The natural world is collateral damage to nations at war; we think in terms of human not environmental costs when we wage war. Pictures of burning oil wells during the Gulf War demonstrated to me how war clouds landscapes and destroys populations, human and otherwise. If earth really matters, war is one of the worst things we can do to it.
Furthermore, it is futile to address big-picture stuff like war and climate in any arena other than political. Personal choices like turning off the water while brushing my teeth or choosing cloth over plastic at the market aren’t political. Lobbying a government to regulate carbon emissions or pursue diplomacy over warfare is political action at every level.
So I transited from pure and fundamental tree hugging—rodents in the backyard and herons in the willows—to political observation and commentary that ultimately changed the nature of my thought.
“Not only did you get lazy,” said the Raven, now perched on my monitor, “but you got wrapped up in politics and forgot about what matters, the stuff politics is really about.”
“At the end of the day,” I told him, “environmental stuff is purely political. There is plenty of bad stuff going on, but a lot of good stuff too.”
I’d like to think we have turned some kind of environmental corner. President Obama said, “We cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now…This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.”
Obama says he will make combating global warming a top priority, and that he will “reinvigorate” the Environmental Protection Agency. He says he will protect our children from toxins like lead, be a responsible steward of our natural treasures and reverse previous administration attempts to chip away at clean air and water standards.
In economic hard times, it is difficult to think about saving the planet. But there must be ways that saving the planet will also help our economies. “Ecology” and “economy” are related words. President Obama intends to establish millions of new “green jobs” creating renewable electricity sources, increasing energy efficiency and weatherizing homes.
Obama will invest $150 billion over ten years in advanced energy technologies. He intends to increase fuel economy standards, enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits and invest cap-and-trade pollution credits in the nation’s energy future. This is all good news for the environment.
I looked at the Raven. “So how’s that for getting back to my roots?” I asked.
“Well, it’s a start,” the bird ruffled his feathers and pecked at my mouse pad. “And you should be proud of yourself for not even once hammering the, uh…former administration.”
Ravens are thoughtful—even talkative, but I’d never encountered one quite so garrulous. I reminded myself that I had asked for this dialogue.
“But I have just one request,” continued the Raven, looking uncomfortable and shifting from foot to foot. “Will you please lay off the metaphors?” I looked at him and shooed him off my computer before he pooped on the keyboard.
“Only that and nothing more?”
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